His ‘activism’ and lack of training disqualify him.
Skepticism drives science. “Settled science,” in all but the most basic parameters, is an oxymoron. Something as simple and as universally accepted today as cleansing one’s hands of germs before touching another person’s open wounds was originally spurned by the scientific establishment of the day. The man who told the doctors who had worked in the pathology lab to wash their hands before delivering babies was driven out of the profession, even though the survival rate of both babies and mothers in a clinic that had no doctors, only midwives, far exceeded the doctor-only clinic. Skepticism is valuable for science.
It is not Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s skeptical bent that renders him unfit to head the Dept. of Health and Human Services. It is his sloppiness with data: his extrapolation of generalizations from limited data, to the detriment of targeted populations and beyond; and his rejection of data altogether.
If two infants die in Somalia from incorrectly prepared measles vaccine, the country temporarily halts vaccinations and 83 children die of measles, a high contagious disease. The problem, according to Robert F. Kennedy, was not the incorrect preparation of the vaccine, but the vaccine itself — and anyway, all those kids didn’t die from measles.So said Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
There is a measles outbreak in Texas right now, the worst in 30 years. There are many reasons, one of which is Kennedy’s vaccine fearmongering; including his view that vaccines have been insufficiently tested, and that what is needed is a massive “control” of unvaccinated children — as if millions upon millions of deaths of unvaccinated people hadn’t already tested Kennedy’s proposition. He does not belong as the head of the nation’s agencies of health, which, keep in mind, include its primary health research funders.
If Rolling Stone and the website Salon publish an article by Kennedy in 2005 that maintains, among other things, that an ingredient in a vaccine causes autism, it matters little that the publication and the website subsequently publish corrections and ultimately, in the case of the website at least, withdraw the article altogether. The damage is done. Fear of vaccines, based on fear of autism, is planted in the minds of many. How many is “many?” One is enough. One person whose child dies because of wrong information promulgated by Kennedy is damning enough. But of course, it is not one child. It is countless children denied life-saving vaccines due to unsubstantiated ideas promulgated by Kennedy.
What is the word for this? Absurdity? Ingratitude? Recklessness? Insanity? Here we are, millennia into the history of the human race, and only in the past century-plus has humanity devised methods to protect us from diseases that felled millions upon millions of people in earlier times — and for these remarkable, life-saving, destiny-altering discoveries, what do we get . . . people who would throw them away? What words can express this?
Two politicians have words: Sen. Mitch McConnell (Kentucky), a Republican, and Steven Cohen (Tennessee), a Democrat, the only two members of Congress who are polio survivors. Their words: “hospitalization,” “physical therapy,” “post-polio syndrome,” “braces,” “dangerous,” “human guinea pigs,” “unconscionable,” “expensive,” “lifelong care.” That’s the non-polio vaccine world — if you survived.
In his confirmation hearings, Kennedy said that he would not halt measles vaccines or polio vaccines. At stake here is not his honesty, but his methodology. Given that he reaches conclusions about scientific matters that are beyond his competence on the basis of his sloppy use of data, or his denial of data, there is no telling what he could proscribe or prescribe that would harm the nation’s health. Such a person does not belong in his position.
However, many argue, he has good ideas about improving the nation’s health. Yes he does. Countless people without respect for scientific method can have good ideas, but we would not appoint them head of the Dept. of Health and Human Services. It is not just good ideas that the department must focus on; it is bad ideas that it should save the nation from. First, do no harm. On that score, Kennedy is not qualified. Measles vaccination rates are falling, due in no small measure to Kennedy’s “activism.” Twenty-five years ago, measles was eliminated in the US. Kennedy played a significant role in changing that.
© IJN 2025
